Cebalord Very best movie i ever watch

ChanFamous I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Wuchak Released in 1952, "Hangman's Knot" tells the story of a small troop of Confederates led by Major Stewart (Randolph Scott) on special assignment in the West to apprehend gold for the Confederacy. After ambushing a Union stagecoach full of gold they find out the war has been over for a month. Desperate, they hitch a ride with stagecoach to get out of the area, but are eventually forced to hold up at a way station. Lee Marvin and Claude Jarman Jr. co-star as two of Stewart's men while Donna Reed plays a Union nurse and Richard Denning her traveling companion."Hangman's Knot" lacks those roll-your-eyes elements typical of too many older Westerns and benefits from a confined-location plot that's conducive to characterization. Many of the characters are corrupted by the bloody four-year war or just plain greed while some try to maintain a sense of honor amidst the madness. Despite the many deaths, the climax leaves you with a good feeling. Contrived or not, it's inspiring.The film runs 81 minutes and was shot in Alabama Hills, Lone Pine and Ray Corrigan Ranch, Simi Valley, California.GRADE: B

classicsoncall Here's a solid little Randolph Scott number with a fine supporting cast taking place only a few weeks after the Civil War has ended. That's unknown to Major Matt Stewart (Scott), and his band of Rebels at the time they hijack a quarter million dollar gold shipment from a band of Union soldiers. Attempting to outrun the authorities that are soon to follow, they find themselves holed up at a way station with two stagecoach travelers who were on board when the Rebs sought cover for their getaway.Lee Marvin gets a fair amount of screen time as the Major's trigger happy, hot headed second, and the story offers a number of scenes where the two collide verbally and physically. It was somewhat of a breakout role for Marvin, who prior had mainly uncredited film parts and a few TV series appearances. The expected final confrontation between the pair however is interrupted by the young soldier Jamie (Claude Jarman Jr.) watching his commanding officer's back. It was somewhat of a twist to the story for this viewer, as all the while, the film kept making it a point that the young man had never killed anyone before, not even during the war. It brought full circle to a remark the Major made to him early in their story that before they got back home, Jamie would have to find a way to become a man.I guess I'm not used to seeing someone like Donna Reed in a Western, so her appearance took some getting used to. I can't say I was fully convinced with her character falling in love with the Major, considering the circumstances of their involvement with the Rebels, and even more so, the palpable difference in their ages. It didn't hurt that her traveling companion and self professed fiancée (Richard Denning) was such a lout, thereby setting up the comparison between himself and Scott's character.The near finale with the Major against the leader of the outlaw posse (Ray Teal) was somewhat original in it's execution and outcome. Oddly staged, it was surprisingly believable that the villain could be hauled away, stuck in his horse's stirrup. Thinking about it, I wondered how far the horse might have run and what the fate of Teal's character Quincey might have been. Would he have been dragged to death, fallen loose, or left to some other fate? Curious to ponder if nothing else.Ultimately, the Major vindicates himself in his sweetheart's eyes when he and his partner Jamie drop their saddlebags of gold bars. You kind of wondered what would happen with all that gold, and in some measure, I still do. Left with the station agent and his daughter in law, there wasn't much in the neighborhood they could do with it all.

loydmooney-1 This one starts out superbly. The main problem is a kind of Hamlet-like attenuation of a situation that should have been over rather quickly: you never believe that it takes as long as it does to drive the main crew out of the house they are holed up in. Suspension of disbelief comes at a premium just as surely as with Hamlet taking upteem hours and days and weeks and months to get rid of the big old bad guy standing in his way......but then there would have been no play, or in this case an entirely different movie. However, the beginning is as good as any Boetticher, all silent, signals as quiet as Comanche smoke while a few rebels are ambushing a Union gold shipment before finding out that it was all wasted effort, that the war has been over quite a while. No doubt a plot to be rescued for some world war two Nazi gold movie. Scott never looked better in a slick black coat believing a rather soft center: it's Frank Faylen who is the greedy one who must pay the price in the end for wanting the gold for himself. Until the rebel band get stuck between four walls, the film moves like a western should. Yellow Sky , a much better foray into lust for lost gold is a lot more believable, and should be seen for comparison what a great director can do with the magnetic little yellow bags. That said, this still should not be missed for the opening twenty or so minutes.

clore_2 1952 saw the Columbia release of one of Scott's best - Hangman's Knot.They don't come much more taut than this, and its success only brings into question as to why director Roy Huggins never made another film as director. This one really begins to approach the later Boetticher films, being set in an isolated way station, as several of Budd's films happened to be, with Randy as a Confederate officer, who has stolen Union gold, not knowing the war is over.Outlaws, learning of the loot, besiege the soldiers at the way station, but just as much danger comes from within - the menacing soldier played by Lee Marvin. The cast is better than those in the then most recent Scott vehicles, including Donna Reed, Claude Jarman, Jr., Richard Denning and Guinn "Big Boy Williams. Randy's son C.H. Scott, in the book "Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott" speaks fondly of Donna Reed, as if she was a second mother, and says that she and his father never lost touch over the years, and were devoted to each other.Omitting the Boetticher films, this one is clearly the strongest Scott offering of the 1950s. That Huggins never directed a feature film again (he did direct a 1970 TV movie) is more our loss than his. Huggins did quite well in the long run, with items like Maverick, Rockford Files and The Fugitive in his future.With much of the film set within the way station, Huggins manages to keep the tension high as Scott has to deal with the group of bounty hunters outside (led by Ray Teal in a rousing performance) and the wayward loose cannon Ralph, the Lee Marvin character. Lee must have impressed producer Scott as he got a much showier role in the first Scott-Boetticher classic SEVEN MEN FROM NOW. Meanwhile, Scott must serve as surrogate big brother of Claude Jarman Jr, no longer the little boy of THE YEARLING and in fact nearly as tall as the film's lead star.Richard Denning also impresses in his part as Donna Reed's fiancée, a character as weak-willed as the fiancée in the later Boetticher film THE TALL T. At first willing to call attention to an attempted escape by Scott and company (despite giving his word otherwise), he later bargains to give them an alternate plan of escape - in exchange for two bars of the captured gold.My favorite of Scott's 50's westerns prior to his Boetticher films and dollar for dollar, the equal of many much bigger budgeted items from the likes of Wayne and Cooper.